Other Programs

URI staff work on numerous initiatives to help students, professionals, and residents define and participate in the conservation, education, and restoration opportunities within the city.

Yale Trees: Employee Service Recognition

Yale staff members who are celebrating five-year milestone anniversaries may choose to have a tree planted in their honor in lieu of selecting a traditional gift.

Trees will be planted on Yale’s campus by the Urban Resources Initiative's GreenSkills program. Yale groundskeepers will water and nurture the tree. The 2015 spring planting will be held on May 9 at 8:30 -12 pm. Volunteers and honorees are invited to attend.

Honorees who are interested in having a tree planted may request one through Yale’s employee service recognition gift catalog. Gift ordering instructions — including those for ordering a tree —will be sent to the honoree just prior to his/her anniversary date via campus mail along with a certificate of appreciation; the honoree also will receive an e-mail with this information on the day of his/her anniversary.

For more information on the Employee Service Recognition tree planting program, please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). For more information on the tree planting itself, contact Anna at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or 203-432-6189.

Open Spaces as Learning Places

For nearly ten years, URI implemented and directed the Open Spaces as Learning Places curriculum to teach New Haven students about environmental stewardship within their communities. While aligned with state-mandated science standards for sixth grade, the curriculum encourages creative exploration of local open spaces as a tool for learning. In sixth grade, students are old enough to understand and appreciate the complex nature of local ecological systems and young enough to retain the sense of wonder that comes from investigating the world around them. Yale F&ES students taught the curriculum in dozens of classrooms between 2001 and 2009. The positive response by principals, teachers and their students led the New Haven Board of Education to adopt the Open Spaces curriculum as required instruction as of 2009.

While URI remains engaged with this incredibly successful program, the summer of 2009 witnessed a handing of the baton as thirty New Haven teachers attended workshops sponsored by NOAA and prepared to lead the curriculum on their own. The individual curriculum units are available for download as pdfs: